Robert F. Kennedy Jr. won’t be on the New York ballot this November, despite his best efforts.
The former independent presidential candidate made a last-ditch appeal to the Supreme Court to remain on the ballot in New York, but was denied Friday. No dissent was noted in the court’s ruling.
“The application for writ of injunction presented to Justice Sotomayor and by her referred to the Court is denied,” read the court’s one-sentence order.
Kennedy officially suspended his campaign and endorsed Donald Trump in late August. But since then, he’s tried to stay on the ballot in states where it would help the Trump campaign and remove himself where it would hurt the former president, with mixed results.
In North Carolina, he got himself removed from the ballot two weeks ago with the help of the state’s Republicans, delaying the state’s distribution of ballots and cutting into early voting. Election officials in the state will have to destroy nearly three million ballots and resign 2,348 ballot styles. In Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio, Kennedy also was successful in getting his name off voting ballots.
In Wisconsin, he’s stuck on the ballot and is petitioning the state Supreme Court to put a sticker over his name, which has never been done and would be a “logistical nightmare” in the words of the circuit court that handled the request. He was also unable to remove himself from the ballot in Michigan and is begging voters there to vote for Trump instead. The Supreme Court’s decision must sting Kennedy because it means he’s unlikely to receive help in these other cases.
Kennedy’s addition to the New York ballot was initially challenged on the grounds that he used an invalid address. During his presidential campaign, Kennedy claimed an address in Katonah, a suburb of New York City, on his petition to be on the state’s ballot, while he and his wife, actress Cheryl Hines, apparently reside in Malibu, California.
Kennedy is renting a room at the Katonah address for $500 a month, but the owner of that property said that those payments began after a New York Post story questioned the candidate’s claim that he lives in New York.
Kennedy has joined Trump’s transition team and hopes to be Trump’s secretary of health and human services, a disturbing job for the noted anti-vaxxer. But his quixotic failed presidential campaign may also ending up hurting Trump’s chances of returning to the White House, taking away votes in key battleground states.
